Being interested v being intrusive

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I’m relatively new to the whole Asperger’s world. I don’t have a diagnosis but a lot of what I have read on here makes sense and has been very helpful to me. Therefore I am hoping someone might be able to give me some advice about how and when to ask questions. I find it very hard to know what questions I should ask to appear interested in a person without becoming intrusive. Although I don’t see the point of ‘courtesy questions’ i.e. 'how are you?’ 'Did you have a good holiday?', I understand how they are used. It’s the next stage really. Any suggestions?

Welcome to WP

It's difficult to give advice because there are so many possible conversation scenarios and some questions will work in some situations and not others. I suppose that for most people knowing what to say is intuitive.

I try and ask questions with the goal of getting the other person to talk as much as possible so I don't have to. A lot of people are quite happy to talk about themselves. Years ago I stumbled across something about the difference between open ended questions and other questions and that was a revelation to me - before that I used to ask lots of 'closed' questions, which probably made the other person feel as if they were being interrogated. An open ended question is one where the person being asked cannot answer with just 'yes' or 'no'. For example if you are asking someone about their job and you say 'Do you like working at McDonalds?' they might give you a full answer, but they could also just say 'No'. If you ask 'What is it like working at McDonalds?' then they are more likely to give you a longer answer. Hopefully within that answer will be a clue to another question you could ask.

I try and ask neutral questions on subjects that the majority of people will not find offensive. I avoid politics. religion, money and sex completely. Subjects like work, their studies or their children are usually ones that people feel confident talking about. I think a lot of it is just down to practice. I try and pay attention to how other people interact with each other and copy them.

Don't "appear" interested, "be" interested is my best advice. It's a state of mind maybe. I find it's just something you get if you ponder it enough, grind on it like a bone, find your own motivations. For me, i don't care and i'm not interested but that has always made me feel extremely guilty. I know that i wouldn't like to be treated as if the way i saw the world and what i thought was stupid and pointless and not worth talking about, and even though that's how i do see most people i still make the effort because it's the right thing to do. Everybody has their story + it's rude to not be interested. With my kind of attitude it just kinda prods me on even if personally i want to sit in silence.

It's good to develop a few social interests. Computer games for guys is good. Other stuff like music, movies anything that most people are caught up in basically. There aren't many places you can go wrong if you keep the conversation on neutral territory.

Yep just be interested or don't ask questions
Also, you'll find people with varying AS will either respond to every question or even find questions like "what colour is the sky" meltdown material. I'd suss out the kind of person you are talking to when asking questions and what kind of questions they are mentally capable of are equipped to handle. There's also "how many questions" to consider, in a conversation. I find keeping the convo neutral, and bringing up discussion points neither related to me or the other person that might be of interest to them will help them come out of their shell.

It depends. There are a few things you don't ask people unless it's in very specific and controlled situations. I'm mainly thinking about things like questioning about someone's health (it's considered very nosy, particularly if it's something touchy like a disease they have or their weight), sex life (none of your business), religion (especially if this leads to angry and heated debate) or politics (again, this can anger/upset people and, in some situations, can lead to violence), money (it's best not to ask questions about this at all unless you're dating them), or employment status (asking somebody what they do for a living is perfectly fine and normal, then going onto interrogate them about it for half an hour isn't).

Also, if people start to give evasive answers, back off.

Are there things that you feel uncomfortable talking about, OP? Perhaps you could start from there and then think about what might be sensitive to other people.

Thank you all for your replies. I’m sorry I haven’t come back and responded to you before now. It’s not that I didn’t read or value your responses, it’s just been a rather difficult week!

I’ve found everything you had to say very interesting and helpful. The problem I have with my so-called courtesy questions, is that the answers given tend to be superficial or false so it’s very difficult to be interested. For example, ‘how are you?’ ‘fine thanks’ how was your holiday?’ ‘great thank you’. Are they really fine, was the holiday really great? Your comment about open questions was a revelation SilkySifaka so thank you! I will be trying this a bit more as I can see it might help to avoid the problem I describe.

Unfortunately Tequila I feel uncomfortable talking about most aspects of ‘normal’ life but I have no problem discussing death, religion etc. Makes it kind of difficult to gauge a conversation!

Thank you again for your insights. I’ll persevere and hopefully get better at this!